NEW DELHI: With Justice DY Chandrachud, son of the longest serving CJI Justice YV Chandrachud, swearing in as the 50th CJI on November 9, 2022, the Indian Judiciary will witness a historic moment as it would get its only father-son duo to reach the position of CJI. Appointed as SC judge in 2016, Justice DY Chandrachud overturned the verdicts of his father in 2017 and 2018.
Speaking for himself, Justices Kehar, RK Aggarwal and S Abdul Nazeer in the 2017 judgment that ruled the right to privacy as being part of the fundamental right, he overturned his father’s ruling in the famous ADM Jabalpur case. While his father had affirmed suspension of a person’s rights to approach court for enforcement of fundamental rights during an emergency, he overruled his father’s views in the privacy case. In 2018, Justice DY Chandrachud struck a discordant node by setting aside his father’s judgment and decriminalising the offence of adultery.
“The law on adultery enforces a construct of marriage where one partner is to cede her sexual autonomy to the other. Being antithetical to the constitutional guarantees of liberty, dignity and equality, Section 497 does not pass constitutional muster,” Justice DY Chandrachud had observed.
He is one of the judges who at times had stark contrast with his co-judges with a view to establish that he intends to uphold the values of the Constitution irrespective of him being the lone dissenting voice echoing in chambers of the country’s highest judicial body. In the famous Aadhaar verdict, Justice Chandrachud while dissenting with the majority had said that Aadhaar was unconstitutionally passed as money bill and violative of fundamental rights. He had also dissented in a case related to the arrest of five human rights activists who had allegedly incited violence at Bhima Koregaon when the other two judges of the bench had allowed Pune police to continue their investigation into the case.
He has been a part of many constitutional benches that have delivered path-breaking verdicts such as the decriminalisation of same-gender consensual sex by striking down Section 377 of IPC which criminalises consensual unnatural sex between consenting adults and recognising “living will” made by terminally-ill patients for passive euthanasia which have played a major role in strengthening the human rights jurisprudence in the country.
He has also authored judgments that have batted for empowering women and breaking the shackles of patriarchy. In his most recent judgment, the judge gave a massive boost to the reproductive rights of women by ruling that prohibiting unmarried or single pregnant women with pregnancies up to 24 weeks from accessing abortion while allowing married women to access them during the same period fell afoul of the spirit of right to equality.
A bench headed by him while giving legal recognition to the offence of marital rape for the first time also ruled that forceful pregnancy of a married woman can be treated as “marital rape” for the purposes of abortion. While striking down the criteria adopted by the Army for granting permanent commission to women had said, In yet another judgment, he had said women are subject to a patriarchal mindset that regards them as primary caregivers and homemakers and thus they are burdened with an unequal share of family responsibilities.
CJI-designate DY Chandrachud was also a part of the five-judge bench that delivered the famous Ayodhya verdict and also that that allowed the entry of women into Sabarimala temple.Chandrachud studied law at Delhi University in 1982, after which he obtained LLM degree and a Doctorate in Juridical Sciences from the prestigious Harvard Law School.
He became India’s youngest lawyer to be designated as Senior Advocate at the age of 39 by the Bombay High Court in 1998 and thereby served as the Additional Solicitor General of India from 1998 to 2000. He was appointed as an additional judge of the Bombay HC on March 29, 2000 and took oath as CJI of Allahabad HC on October 31, 2013. He took oath as the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court on 31 October 2013.